Hot Sauce!

 

“What kind of peppers do you think they are?”  Elliot asked.  His grandparents had sent some small, apparently quite spicy, peppers our way.  They sat in a plastic baggy, all five of them, looking mildly back at us, hiding their true nature inside their yellow skins.

“Google will tell me,” I said and snapped a picture and quickly Google informed of the answer.

“Elliot, do you know why the pepper couldn’t hit the target?”

“Does this have anything to do with these peppers?”  Elliot was not buying my Dad joke sensibility.

“Because it didn’t Hab-a-nero!”  I said.

“That’s not the way Spanish speaking people say it,” he said, critically.  “They don’t pronounce the “Hs” in their words.”

“Maybe it’s a cockney dad joke,” I said.  “Anyway, these are Habanero Peppers – whether or not you pronounce the H.”

It was at this point that Elliot got his bright idea.  “I’m going to make my own hot sauce!”  He said.  “These Habaneros will be perfect to start that!”

“There are a few Jalapenos in the fridge too,” his mother put in.  “You can use those too if you want.”

And so began the quest for hot sauce.  Elliot quickly found an online recipe.  “The only thing is that it says you should wear a respirator if you are going to make this,” he said. 

“Maybe that’s why Darth Vader wears one,” I said.  “He seems like a big hot sauce sort of fellow.  I’m sure when he isn’t force choking soldiers, he’s in the kitchen whipping up his latest spicy concoction.  You’ll have to make do with the hood on over the stove.  Hopefully that will take away the worst of the fumes.”

Elliot began working on his hot sauce.  He was careful to wear gloves and got all of his ingredients diced up well and put them on the stove top to cook together.  It was about this time that I heard him begin to cough and I came downstairs to investigate.

The air was thick with capsaicin.  It really did get into your throat and irritated it and you couldn’t help but cough at regular intervals.  For some reason, Elliot hadn’t turned on the vent above the stove and once he did this, things got a little better, but for the rest of the evening if you went anywhere near the kitchen, you would start to get choked up.

Of course, hot sauce is one of those things where a little bit goes a long way.  A few drops are good; a cup is overwhelming.  When it is aerosolized, it makes you realize how easy it is for viruses to float on the air just waiting for an unsuspecting soul to inhale them and begin a journey towards mucus production. 

There are other things in life where too much is not beneficial.  Wealth is one of those things.  Proverbs tells us, “Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil.” (Proverbs 15:16)

The point is not that severe poverty is beneficial to anyone – clearly it isn’t, but the pursuit of wealth brings with it chaos and turmoil.  Choosing instead to pursue other things and to give generously with what we do have is the solution.

Just a small amount of hot sauce is needed to bring out the flavor of a taco.  In much the same way, a small amount of wealth with a large dose of contentment is what is needed to bring satisfaction, while the reverse will only bring a life of turmoil.